Ron Vavruska

           Both Jeanne and I were born in 1940 and raised in Queens, NY.  On my father’s side I’m from a Czech background and on my mother’s side from a German back ground.  Both of my parents were born in the USA.  You already know Jeanne’s background on her mother’s side.  Her father side is Croatian.  Her father left when her mother was pregnant and Jeanne never knew him.   Her mother was reluctant to talk about him and Jeanne never asked because she didn’t want to upset her mother.

          When WWII started Jeanne’s mother went to work in a defense plant (I think Sperry) and both of them lived with Aunt Mary in Hollis.  They lived upstairs in a 2 family house and your mother and Bill Bayer lived downstairs.  After Bill Bayer died, you r mother moved upstairs also.

        Jeanne’s mother married John Wohrle in 1947 and they moved to Middle Village, Queens.  Jeanne was never adopted by John Wohrle and officially maintain her father’s name of Resko for schooling and other documents.  When we met she told me her name was Wohrle.

         We met when I was in my first year of college and working in the A&P.  After my first year I switched to night school and went to work with AT&T.  We married in 1962 and had an apartment in Ozone Park, Queens.  I graduated in 1963 and went to work for the Naval Training Device Center(NTDC) in Sands Point on the north shore.  NTDC was planning to move to facilities at the closed Mitchell Field.  Ronnie was a baby then and we decide to buy a house and the most logical place was East Meadow where I would be very close to work when my Job moved.  Well, we were in the house 2 weeks when NTDC announced that they would be moving to Florida instead of Mitchell Field.  No way were we going to sell a house we just moved into an d go to Florida.  I got a job with the Naval Plant Representative at Grumman, where I was overseeing design changes to military aircraft.  I never had anything to do with the moon lander.

          Chris was born in 1965 and right after Craig was born in 1969 I went to work for the FAA at JFK.  A promotion came up and we moved to Acton, Massachusetts in 1973 which was where we were when you came to visit. I think that visit was in the early 1990s

            I continued to work for the FAA until I retired in 2000.  My job in the FAA was certifying aircraft designs.  I figured that there were companies with aircraft designs that didn’t know how to get their designs certified.  I started a consulting business which has been working out quite well.  I’m not busy on a continuous basis which gives me enough time to do those retirement things like play golf, travel and just plain loaf.  I’ve never worked a full week but some projects have been 2 or 3 days a week for several weeks and sometimes I go several weeks with no work and sometimes just a few hours a week on short projects.  Right now I’m reviewing a client’s reports before he submits them to the FAA which is why I didn’t get to this email earlier.

          Jeanne and I both love to travel and right after I retired we went on a trip to Germany starting with the EXPO 2000 in Hanover and touring by car through western Germany and Alsace in France.  I had lots of good beers in Germany but Jeanne doesn’t like beers so we traveled the Wine Strasser in Germany and the Rue de Vin in France.  These are both mapped out wine routes and we stopped at quite a few wineries which I had no objection ( I like wine too).  Since I retired we have been to Europe few times, usually renting a car and touring or twice going by cruise ships starting and ending in Europe with stops in various ports.  Onetime we took a ship that started in Rome stopped in ports in Europe and the went across the Atlantic to Fort Lauderdale.  Jeanne has developed arthritis and can’t walk long distances so lately our trips have been on cruise ships,  For the last 8 or 9 years we have taken a winter cruise in the Caribbean.   We can live on my retirement pension and all my part time business income we spend on travel.

          Now for the beer.  I never drank much beer but I did know that I liked draft beer better than cans or bottles.  We went to the Munich Octoberfest in 1980 and the beers blew my mind; they weren’t like your Budweiser or other American beers.  During our travel through the rest of Germany I had several different type of beers an all the menus had a full page of beer selections which I had no idea of the differences.  After we got back home I took books out of the library to learn about the different beer types.  Each book had a section in the back on home brewing.  In 1982 Jeanne got me a beer kit for Christmas and that started the whole thing  Home brewing only became legal in the US in 1979 so the only books on home brewing were English books with instructions to use treacle sugar and obtain other ingredients at your local chemist shop.  The first beer I made using a recipe out of one of the books called for 9 cups of sugar and 5 cups of malt syrup,  It wasn’t very good but I didn’t give up.  At that time there wasn’t an Excel spread sheet and we didn’t even have a computer.  I kept all my notes in a stenographers pad.  In Acton we had an in-law apartment where my mother lived before she died and I used the kitchen for brewing  Jeanne didn’t like the smell that drifted into the house .  We moved to a condo in 2002 and I insisted that we have a walk-out basement so I could use my propane burner outside.  Our basement is partially finished and I set up a brew room in portion of the remaining part of the basement.  I put in a stove and a sink with 3 faucets so I can clean up and run water through my wort chiller at the same time.  I also built a 3 tier platform for gravity flow with the hot wort on the top, the wort chiller in the middle and fermenting carboy on the bottom.  The last couple of years I’ve slowed down in my brewing but not my drinking.

              I’m sorry to learn that that you’re not able to drink beer especially since your emails indicate that you like beer and the brewing process.  Are you not drinking beer because of your doctor’s orders or do you find it makes you sick when you drink beer.  A number of years ago I was take a prescription antibiotic with a label that said “Don’t drink alcohol while taking this medicine”.  Like most people I assumed that the alcohol would counter the effectiveness of the medicine.  I asked the pharmacist and he told me that a lot of people get an upset stomach when they drink alcohol when taking that particular medicine so they always put the label on.  I asked that if I found out that I didn’t get an upset stomach while taking the medicine then I didn’t have stop drinking alcohol.  He gave me a simple “sure”.  I told many people to check with their doctor or pharmacist before blindly following a label.  I don’t know if any of this applies in your case but I thought I’d pass it along.

            Best of luck and I hope your treatments are successful.

Regards,

Ron